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Recent Articles from Todd Ordal
Too much hay
A client recently sent a financial plan to several of us for feedback. It was a beautiful piece of work with many tabs. Data from numerous sources were rolled up to an extremely detailed forecast. Though not hand-drawn by monks in Ireland, it was as detailed as The Book of Kells. The management te...
The certainty trap
Those who were confident but not always certain were more successful, more fun to be around and more respected by their teams. Those who were always certain (think Donald Rumsfeld) were constantly one step away from a catastrophic error. And if it came, they had little support from those around th...
Clearing out the crud
Anyway, my gutter didn’t drain itself, my wife didn’t see it (or perhaps she secretly has the same strategy I do!) and I didn’t pass away peacefully in the night. So I figured I should do something. I climbed the ladder, found a slimy ball of accumulated crud in the drain, pulled it out and voilà!...
Sticking with stacking?
Do you ever watch The Voice or Dancing With the Stars? They’d be pretty bland if everyone got a 10 and they never declared a winner. Likewise, if your house were on fire, wouldn’t you like to know that the fire department weeded out those who didn’t have the physical ability to perform? Do you wat...
Top 10 easiest ways to transform your business
Dr. Alan Weiss has a saying: “If you improve your operation by 1 percent each day, in 70 days, you are twice as good.” I hope one of these might be your 1 percent for the day: Work faster. If you use the same assets (for example, time, talent, physical resources and money) and work more quickly, y...
In business, trust — but verify
I believe your management practice must allow you to know the critical elements of your business. You also need processes to verify the trust you’ve placed in others. Further, you must have clear project ownership. In the past few months, I observed numerous situations in companies where executive...
Preparing to think fast
I was just at a thought-leadership conference with some talented colleagues, and we had a dynamic speaker. He talked about the seminal moments in his life that led to his success. It wasn’t so much about brilliance at the precise moment, but rather what he did to prepare that allowed him to identi...
Taking the dogfight to a higher plane
Too many businesses keep turning circles around each other, round and round in a horizontal plane with no one gaining a significant advantage. They should look for a way to go oblique, taking the fight to another level. It’s not easy to do, and it requires you to think differently about the battle...
The baling-wire-and-braces strategy
Many organizations have the same wire and braces that the Wyoming house did. Rather than correct problems or prevent them, they use contingency measures or adaptive techniques. While often good short-term solutions, when you don’t correct or prevent problems, you end up with an organization full o...
A half-caf, nonfat strategy
When business demands that you take a hard right, you can’t waiver. If you’re like the woman in front of me at Starbucks today — unsure about the size, caffeine dose or foam — you won’t have a shot at success. My favorite coffee shop calls a decaf, nonfat cappuccino a “why bother.” A close cousin...
Maximize, minimize or optimize?
Maximizing market share sometimes means you buy it from your competitors, and that most always means margin degradation. Bigger is sometimes better, but not always. Shooting for market share above all else is a bit like marketing for eyeballs on the web. Many eyeballs don’t carry wallets!
A business story about execs who deliver
If characters in a series don’t develop, you question the author’s ability. Studly young spies who kill bad guys with their pinkie must turn into wily veterans who use their head as well as their hands. Likewise, business leaders must bolster raw enthusiasm and intuition with systems, techniques a...
